4 ms·

As a sort of real-time answer, my startup[1][2] just had a booth at the NMX/NAB show in Las Vegas and completely blew up from a user acquisition perspective, a

As a sort of real-time answer, my startup[1][2] just had a booth at the NMX/NAB show in Las Vegas and completely blew up from a user acquisition perspective, and had applied to this upcoming round without getting an interview. We wanted to sign about 8 blogs in order to cover the costs of going to the show, and wound up signing over 1200 blogs, 5 major retailers, a couple licensing deals, and a lot of smaller retailers (some fashion startups among them) whose products we could list in our catalog. I'm kind of glad that the interview wasn't even an option, since we're based out of San Diego and it simplifies the logistics of our operations for not having to move to SF for a period. Having no idea of how NMX/NAB was going to go, YC seemed like the best way to get our idea out there whilst getting their great support system. Now, we can just go heads-down in development and prepare for our June release. It's always extremely discouraging to get rejections -- we got rejected from EvoNexus[3], TechCrunch Disrupt NY, and YCombinator (twice). This pretty much tells me that I'm horrible at filling out applications. I'd like to think that if the YC partners had walked up and talked to us at our booth, we would have definitely gotten the interview. This Vegas trip was the most amazing thing that has happened since I came up with the idea of pleenq[4], because we barely had to sell the product -- people were so excited by the possibilities it would bring, and about all the monetization opportunities it opens up. Most of our customers were referrals from others who had seen our booth, and were told to "make sure they saw pleenq before they left the show". I closed every single person I talked to at our booth over the 4 days of the show, which was basically the highest form of encouragement I could have hoped for. [1] https://facebook.com/pleenq https://facebook.com/pleenq and http://pleenq.com http://pleenq.com [2] Demo of PLEENQ that we showed at NAB/NMX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wu4gaiaA7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wu4gaiaA7I [3] A San Diego-based incubator that takes 0% equity and is really great for startups with a little bit of traction [4] Pleenq lets you tag items in any image on the internet and link them to where they can be purchased

fnbr 11y ago
Why do you want/need an incubator? Pleenq seems like an idea that's very easy to bootstrap.
- bazillion 11y ago
  The EvoNexus incubator takes 0% equity and would give us free office space, $25K in yearly Amazon (AWS) credits, and exposure to VC's if we had gone the funding route. Our office is actually in the same building as EvoNexus (11th floor vs. 2nd floor), so it seemed like a logical fit. As you said, though, it turns out it was just much easier to bootstrap the entire thing since it starts paying off really quickly.
- dandare 11y ago
  For instance having a family can make any bootstrapping almost impossible.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Not necessarily. It will be a lot harder but by no means impossible, and you can have one more person working on the start-up in the beginning which is actually a benefit.
pa5tabear 11y ago
Did you intentionally mix serif and sans-serif fonts on your website? It made my amateur design hackles stand up.
- gkoberger 11y ago
  Maybe I'm missing it, but they only seem to be using serif fonts as headers. That's totally legitimate, although their choice of serifs is horrible.
- ch_sm 11y ago
  same here. in principle, one can mix and match serif and sans-serif fonts as deemed fitting, but this here seems to be a mistake. the designers wanted to use a font named Arvo, but failed to include it via @font-face. thus, the browser falls back to the default serif font.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    That's... quite an unprofessional mistake to make. If you have Arvo, the design looks sort-of-okay. I have more of a problem with the ad copy. "Easily tag items to where they can be purchased" is non-standard English and doesn't do a great job of communicating what's going on. I had to chew through it a couple of times to work out what it meant.
- bazillion 11y ago
  I contracted out the website, and although it isn't to my liking (doesn't look at all good on mobile), it just needed to exist to facilitate user signups. Our actual work was done in person at the show, so the website wasn't going to turn off anyone that was interested since they already knew what it was before going to it. The eventual website will be more of a web application akin to twitter, instead of a signup landing page. We've just prioritized releasing the actual extension ahead of getting the website done, since the probability of an organic signup was next to nothing.
wtjones 11y ago
I always thought Svpply was the future and Amazon missed the boat on not acquiring them. This is a great idea.
mw67 11y ago
Do users have to install the browser extension to see the image with link? Or can anyone use it (even without the extension)? This seems like a strong barrier.
10dpd 11y ago
So this is an image map generator?

fnbr 11y ago

Why do you want/need an incubator? Pleenq seems like an idea that's very easy to bootstrap.

bazillion 11y ago
The EvoNexus incubator takes 0% equity and would give us free office space, $25K in yearly Amazon (AWS) credits, and exposure to VC's if we had gone the funding route. Our office is actually in the same building as EvoNexus (11th floor vs. 2nd floor), so it seemed like a logical fit. As you said, though, it turns out it was just much easier to bootstrap the entire thing since it starts paying off really quickly.
dandare 11y ago
For instance having a family can make any bootstrapping almost impossible.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Not necessarily. It will be a lot harder but by no means impossible, and you can have one more person working on the start-up in the beginning which is actually a benefit.

pa5tabear 11y ago

Did you intentionally mix serif and sans-serif fonts on your website? It made my amateur design hackles stand up.

gkoberger 11y ago
Maybe I'm missing it, but they only seem to be using serif fonts as headers. That's totally legitimate, although their choice of serifs is horrible.
ch_sm 11y ago
same here. in principle, one can mix and match serif and sans-serif fonts as deemed fitting, but this here seems to be a mistake. the designers wanted to use a font named Arvo, but failed to include it via @font-face. thus, the browser falls back to the default serif font.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  That's... quite an unprofessional mistake to make. If you have Arvo, the design looks sort-of-okay. I have more of a problem with the ad copy. "Easily tag items to where they can be purchased" is non-standard English and doesn't do a great job of communicating what's going on. I had to chew through it a couple of times to work out what it meant.
bazillion 11y ago
I contracted out the website, and although it isn't to my liking (doesn't look at all good on mobile), it just needed to exist to facilitate user signups. Our actual work was done in person at the show, so the website wasn't going to turn off anyone that was interested since they already knew what it was before going to it. The eventual website will be more of a web application akin to twitter, instead of a signup landing page. We've just prioritized releasing the actual extension ahead of getting the website done, since the probability of an organic signup was next to nothing.

wtjones 11y ago

I always thought Svpply was the future and Amazon missed the boat on not acquiring them. This is a great idea.

mw67 11y ago

Do users have to install the browser extension to see the image with link? Or can anyone use it (even without the extension)? This seems like a strong barrier.

10dpd 11y ago

So this is an image map generator?